The populace of the great mis-guided state of California voted in the Nov. ‘04 election to authorize up to 3 billion dollars for stem cell research. Not that stem cell research in itself is mis-guided, it’s just that this bond issue was targeted at research using embryonic stem cells, which require the destruction of nascent human life for harvesting. I wonder if the language of this measure will allow researchers to shift gears in light of this week’s news about the three teams of scientists that have created “embryonic” stem cells from the skin cells of mice tails?

Three teams of scientists said yesterday they had coaxed ordinary mouse skin cells to become what are effectively embryonic stem cells without creating or destroying embryos in the process — an advance that, if it works with human cells, could revolutionize stem cell research and quench one of the hottest bioethical controversies of the decade.

In work being published today, the scientists describe a method for turning back the biological clocks of skin cells growing in laboratory dishes. Thus rejuvenated, the cells give rise to daughter cells that are able to become all the parts needed to make a new mouse.

If the process also works with human cells, as scientists suspect it will with some modifications, it would mean that a person’s own skin cells could be converted directly into stem cells without having to collect healthy human eggs or destroy human embryos — steps that until now have been required to obtain embryonic stem cells.

Those stem cells could then be used to make a wide variety of personalized replacement tissues.

It’s not a slam dunk, human being wise, with much research left to do to see if this will be viable for devising human treatments, and there are basic problems with the procedures required to force mature cells to turn back into an embryonic form like tumors for instance — which by the way is a problem that keeps showing up in the embryonic stem cell research. Things with the capability to turn into anything sometimes do just that.

If you read the whole WaPo article, you’ll see that the scientists are still fuming over the Congress’ not yet overturning Bush’s veto on the use of embryos in this type of research. Figures — they want increased access to tax payers’ dollars.

I hope that “we” decide to spend a big bunch of those on the perfection of this exciting new method! That’s a big win-win for us all!

Technorati Tags: embryonic stem cells, stem cells

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Blinded by Science, Culture of Death, Culture of Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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